A Song for Julia

Seriously? I couldn’t believe that show had survived a single night, much less an entire season.
    Five minutes later, Serena stood in the door to the hallway and said, in an odd voice, “I found Julia.”
    “What?” Mark asked.
    I raised my eyebrows. What was she talking about?
    “Come on,” she said. “You guys gotta see this.” She didn’t even look at me as she said the words.
    Mark and Pathin followed her back down the hall. Whatever this was, I didn’t want any part of it. But then Mark shouted, “Holy shit!” and suddenly I was interested.
    I walked down the hall and looked into Serena’s room, where the three of them were crowded around her computer.
    What the hell?
    Splashed across the screen was a photo, a good one. Me and Julia, kissing in front of the White House.
    Serena was reading the words below the picture:
    “Young Ms. Thompson was found in passionate embrace of Crank Wilson on Saturday evening in front of the White House. Wilson is the lead singer-guitarist of a mildly successful alternative punk-rock band, which plays the local circuit in Boston and Providence. His rap-sheet is nearly as long as Ms. Thompson’s transcripts.”
    Mark laughed. “Dude, you banged that college girl from Saturday?”
    “What? No.”
    “Not what the article says.”
    “What the hell? Why in God’s name is that there, anyway?”
    Serena looked at me, her eyelids lowered. “It’s not you, Crank. This is a society gossip blogger. She’s not interested in trash from South Boston. She’s interested in this girl … Julia. Why didn’t you just tell us about her? Are you hung up on her?”
    I shrugged. “What the hell, guys? It’s just a girl.”
    “Was she good?” Mark asked. “She looked it. Wicked ass. She looked kinda like a librarian, though. Hmm …” He started to sing, off-key, “ My sexy librarian! ”
    “Shut the hell up, Mark. And I have no idea. I dropped her off at her parents’ condo and headed back to the hotel. And I don’t see how this is any of your business, anyway. Any of you.” As I said the last words, I leveled my gaze at Serena. She knew better. She knew better . I’d made it clear more than once we weren’t going there, ever.
    She stood up. “Anything that affects the band is my business.”
    “Serena, you’re being ridiculous. We didn’t even exchange frickin’ phone numbers. And it’s not like I’m not out screwing girls all the time. You ought to know that.”
    She flinched. I’d said the words to hurt, and she knew it. But she held her ground.
    “I don’t give a crap about that, Crank. But don’t tell me it doesn’t touch the band … you heard that song you wrote! Tell me you don’t feel something for that girl.”
    “So what if I do?”
    “If you do, that’s good. But be honest with us.”
    Mark and Pathin were watching, both of them quiet for a change. And it was no wonder. Serena stared at me with eyes that could kill.
    I walked up to her and nose-to-nose said, “I met the girl. We had fun for one night. We talked. We kissed. We said good night. The end. All right? Now can you leave me alone?”
    She gave a slight snort, her lips turned up in scorn, and very slightly shook her head. “Whatever, Crank.”

    Party-Girl (Julia)
    Okay. It could have been worse. For example, Maria Clawson could have posted that picture. The one someone took my freshman year in high school. The one that my former best friend emailed to the entire junior class the week before we left Beijing. The one that gave credence to the vicious rumors about me.
    No, I got lucky this time. She didn’t post it, though I’m sure it was buried somewhere on her website. She’d edited that picture, the old one, to block out my face and anything that could get her jailed. But, it was clear enough.
    Maria used to write for the Washington Post Society Page, before the Post ditched the Society page. Since then, she set up her own hideous little blog, which, while it doesn’t have the kind of traffic huge websites have, she did have subscribers who paid through the nose for her little tidbits of gossip and sleaze and slander. The subscribers were almost exclusively wealthy, powerful members of society themselves. No one else could afford the exorbitant prices Maria charged for full access to her website. And nothing delighted them more than to see one of their peers, or one of their peers’ children, involved in some sort of hideous scandal. Maria had covered it all: drunkenness,